Medtronic Visit

I visited Medtronic on March, 8th, 2019 with University of Minnesota’s Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Student Chapter group. This was the 4th industry that I visited with the students (after 3M, Target, and Worrell), but had the longest visit time: the group that provided this opportunity really prepared a lot for the students, and the students (including me) were very excited about the experience. (There aren’t much opportunity for them to visit industries with such care).

There were foods and presentations on the previously developed medical device products, and we were able to tour inside the innovation lab as well. Medtronic also had the most friendly atmosphere compared to other industries we visited, and I think that is why a lot of graduates want to work there. On our way back, the undergraduates, who I gave ride to, were talking about their future plans for portfolio so that they could apply after graduation.

From the experience, I realized how important it is to do these on-site visits for the engineering and design students, and promised myself that I will always have these events when I design a course in design innovation. A great experience at the company site motivates students to really think about their future, and encourages them to plan out the plan for becoming something in the society. One of the student said, “I didn’t know there were so many job titles. I’m thinking about which specific role I want to work on when I get to work here”. Overall, I think the visit was inspiring for everyone.

The applied innovation lab was one of the places we toured. The group that worked in this lab did all the UX experiments that I learned about at Nielsen Norman UX conference. The names were different, but they were basically doing the Agile and Lean UX research. This was a still growing team, and was figuring out their tasks, they said that they had to promote themselves within the organization - telling other groups what they can do, and how they can improve the outcome. I thought this issue was exactly what every UX teams from different corporates talked about. I see a great deal of growing research opportunities here: how can UX teams be promoted in the organization so that the organization becomes more effectively? UX is a new area, and a new type of job that is needed in EVERY kind of project, and every kind of departments, it is extremely hard to fit it in the existing organizational structure.

Medtronic

710 Medtronic Parkway
Minneapolis, MN 55432-5604 USA